


on the other side

by Hymn



Series: Hymn's Fic: The Magicians Collection [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Discussion of feelings, Discussion of kink, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Depression, Lots and Lots of Schmoop, M/M, Mostly Comedy, Post-Season/Series 04, Reunion Sex, Schmoop, and just, but they're pretty brief, if you need a list drop me a comment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 00:12:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18680134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hymn/pseuds/Hymn
Summary: Eliot died at age thirty.





	on the other side

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a serious fic. I needed a break from the behemoth I'm working on, and all of my feels right now are queliot feels. Title is from the song The Other Side by VACAY because it inspired this fucker. I hope you enjoy, <3

Eliot died at age thirty.

“Well,” Penny said a bit dryly when Eliot swept his way off the elevator. “You lasted _slightly_ longer than Coldwater. I guess that’s to be congratulated. I kind of figured you’d drink yourself to death before this.”

Primly, Eliot straightened the cuffs of his heavy coat. It was nice that the blood had disappeared, as well as the massive rends in the silk blouse beneath it, the coat itself, and Eliot’s trousers. Oh, yes, and also that all his bodily bits were back where they belonged. Eliot might have been dead, but at least he was _fabulously_ dead. 

He said, “Yes, well, it wasn’t for lack of trying. It just happens that one of Margo’s erstwhile conquests got to me first. That damned _quickening_.”

Penny grimaced. 

“Poor Margo,” Eliot lamented. “My Bambi will be _beside_ herself with grief. I hope she doesn’t blame herself for too long. A decade, maybe two. At least she knows how to accessorize black.”

“Would you like to go see?” Penny asked, sounding like an automated voice message, offering to turn Eliot into Ebenezer’s ghost, act three. “It can help, sometimes, with the process. There’s a lot to be learned by the way people grieve your passing. Maybe --”

“ _Goodness_ ,” Eliot interrupted, peering past Penny’s shoulder and down the bare corridor beyond. “This place is as ugly and sterile as your attire, did someone actually design this? To be _comforting?_ That’s hilarious, no really. And your offer sounds marvelously tempting, I do so love being the life of the party -- _oh wait_.”

“Please don’t be difficult,” Penny begged.

Eliot smiled, sharp as the teeth that had ripped out his throat. “Me? _Difficult?_ Don’t be insulting, Penny-40. I can handle my own shit. Just take me to Quentin and we’ll call it a job well done, gold star, voila!”

Penny just sighed.

* * *

“You’re not making this easy,” Penny implored.

Eliot couldn’t see his expression, but he expected it looked all pinched and constipated. Penny-23 had never quite managed to nail the look. Maybe because Quentin hadn’t survived over there long enough to irritate him into developing it. 

_Oh_.

Now there was a thought.

“Say,” said Eliot, draped tragically over the leather sofa in Penny’s office, arm over his eyes just like he’d imagined doing for whatever shrink he was saddled with when he inevitably became rich, famous, and even more broken than he’d been -- well, before magic that had been the plan, at least. Eliot had _plenty_ of practice imagining it.

“I’m afraid to ask, but -- what?”

“In the -- whatever-it-is,” Eliot said, a little dreamily. “The Hereafter, the place I’m going to go after this -- how many Quentins are there, do you think? I mean, our universe splintered into forty different timelines, right? Is it -- and please don’t correct me if I’m wrong, I want to really savor this thought for a moment -- but is it _possible_ that I could have a harem of _forty Quentins_ as my reward?”

Penny made a strangled sound, like the thought of that many Quentins was enough to make him need to be ill, immediately and violently. “What the -- _no_ , it -- oh, god.”

In a single move, Eliot was upright on the couch, leaning forward and grinning viciously at Penny. “You don’t _know_ ,” he said, delighted. “Oh, my god. I could actually do it, couldn’t I? A whole harem of dorky, short nerd-boys at my beck and call, I could --”

“Let’s talk about this,” said Penny, in the only revenge he could wield now. “What does this say about who you are as a person? Did you feel unloved as a child?”

“Darling,” Eliot drawled, not letting his grin slip for a single _second_. “I was a hateful child, a hateful teen, and a hateful adult -- I’d say all this lovely dream of mine reveals is a secret sex fantasy, formerly unbeknownst even to _me_ , in which I am gangbanged _brutally_ by multiple copies of the same person, otherwise known as Quentin Coldwater, love of my life.”

Penny looked a little pale. “Ah,” he said. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Are we?” Eliot asked, quirking his head. “Is _that_ the kind of secret you’re looking for? My, how _sordid_. But I suppose the dead need to get their jollies off somehow. Hm, shall I tell you about the time I _almost_ asked Q to tie me up and spank me until I cried, but couldn’t _quite_ get up the courage to do it --”

Now, Penny looked a little like _he_ might cry.

“Is it at all possible,” he said sadly, “for you to tell me meaningful things about your regrets and fears and the people worthy of your love with _out_ it being all about sex, too?”

Eliot just looked at him.

Penny laid his head on his desk and groaned.

* * *

“And then, there was that time we learned that Q really, _really_ liked being gagged because he -- he started to _say_ it, you know? Started to tell me that he loved me, but I was far too afraid to hear it, because then I’d have to _do_ something about it.”

“Did you _ever_ let him tell you?”

Eliot ran his tongue over his teeth, thinking. His voice cracked a little when he admitted, “Probably not. Sometimes he’d look at me, and I’d just -- do something. Drop to my knees and suck him off, leave the room, make some sort of stupid joke -- anything to move past it, to run and keep running.”

“You got good at running.”

“I _did_ ,” Eliot agreed. “And then, when I decided not to run anymore, he was -- gone.”

* * *

“-- stuck his tongue in my ass --”

“-- please, please, please don’t --”

“-- I knew he couldn’t be _that_ mad --””

“-- I fucking hate my existence --”

“-- because you don’t rim someone --”

“-- so fucking much --”

“-- you _hate_ , you know?”

* * *

“You guys had a lot of sex,” Penny said, around session number 46. He sounded a little shell-shocked, but really, Eliot and Quentin had spent _fifty years together_. He shouldn’t have expected anything less. “Don’t you, I don’t know, want to talk about anyone else in your life. Margo, maybe?”

“You do know I’ve had sex with Margo too, right?” Eliot asked, tone dry.

“Jesus _wept_ , man!”

* * *

Eventually, Eliot was bound to fill the spank banks of all these dead fucks, or like, warm their cold, bitter hearts with tales of _meaningful sex_ , and Eliot’s greatest regret, and also the bravery he’d learned from it. “You did good at the end there,” Penny told him, “when you weren’t drunk, at least.”

“I was a high functioning alcoholic,” Eliot corrected. “Don’t lie -- I was _brilliant_.”

And he had been, actually. Had worked hard to be someone worthy of the kind of love and life Quentin had given him. Remembered how to be the sort of person Teddy would have been proud to call father. Chosen to be the kind of friend that Margo deserved, and the hero that Fillory needed, every time. 

Penny smiled a little, inclining his head in capitulation, unable to deny. “Does it bother you how it all ended?”

“...What?”

“The way you died,” Penny asked. “You weren’t a hero like Coldwater. No blaze of glory, no reason to consider your death worthwhile. I’m surprised, honestly. Most accidental deaths we get are furious. They rant and rave about how it’s not fair, how it’s not --”

“Being left behind isn’t fair,” Eliot said, cold and small and precise. 

Penny was silent a moment.

Eliot wondered if he was thinking of Kady. He hoped he was; she deserved for him to hurt, at least a little. Was it embarrassing to know that Eliot, once a High King of Fillory, still intelligent, good-looking, strong and brave, and utterly bursting with promise when he wasn’t drowning in darkness and guilt and sadness, had shuffled off the mortal coil via magical STD?

“Sure,” Eliot allowed. “It stings the pride. A _bit_. But I can’t really be bothered. I’m here now, aren’t I? All I want, all I have _been_ wanting, is to find Q so that I can shake him, and yell at him for leaving me without even giving me a chance to say _hello_ , let alone _good bye!”_

“Wow,” breathed Penny. “That’s the first time you’ve yelled.”

“There are few things I feel very strongly about,” Eliot sniffed, examining the embroidery of his coat’s sleeve. He hoped the Hereafter had a good tailor. There was only so long you could stand to wear the same clothing, no matter how dashing you looked in it. 

“Oh?”

“Mm. But what I _do_ care about,” Eliot said silkily, looking up at Penny beneath his lashes. “I care about very, _very_ strongly. Are we done?”

Penny looked at him a long time, elbows on his desk, fingers interlocked and pressed against his mouth. Eliot held his gaze and forced himself to keep it, waiting. Eventually, Penny said, “For now.” He hesitated before pushing back from the desk, rubbing at his face wearily. Then he added, “Maybe for good. We’ll see.”

* * *

When the metrocard got slapped onto the desk, Eliot almost didn’t believe it. “Are you serious?” Eliot asked, eyeing it longingly and with great suspicion. “Is there a catch? Do I need to retell the great bathtub fuck where I came so hard I _cried_ , or --”

“I need bleach,” Penny said heavily. “For my brain. But no -- no catch.”

Eliot hummed, rocking on his heels with his hands gripping firmly at his elbows behind his back. “So why the change of heart? Just because I showed you a little _emotion?”_

“Other than horny?” said Penny dryly. He rolled his eyes and pushed the metrocard a little further along the table. “Yeah, pretty much. We needed to be sure you were ready to move on. But part of moving on is knowing that there was a place for you to move on _from_.”

Eliot bit his tongue rather than call bullshit on _that_ , but --

Penny just snorted. “You once believed that nothing in life was important, or worth being upset over, because _everything_ upset you. You hated being alive, you hated yourself, you hated everyone around you.”

“Margo --”

“Was a step in the right direction,” Penny agreed. “But the life you shared with Quentin -- the family you made, the love you learned -- that changed the world for you.”

“It wasn’t just Q,” said Eliot, the words coming slow. He stared at that little slip of paper on the desk, shiny and yellow and waiting for him. His fingers twitched, grip hard enough to bruise if he’d been alive. “It wasn’t. But -- he was most of it. The beating heart of it, I suppose you might say.”

“Are you glad that you were alive? That your life was what it was, with all the good and the bad?”

Eliot thought a moment, because Penny had lied -- there _was_ a catch, this last test right here, right now. He settled on saying, “I’m glad I survived. I hated my childhood -- I always will. It was shit. And I was unhappy, yes, and I wish I hadn’t been. But you’re right -- I’m glad that despite all that fucked up _shit_ I went through, I stuck around long enough to meet Margo, and Q, and even _you_.”

Penny smiled. For once, it almost looked genuine.

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” Eliot said, clearing his throat and stepping forward all at once, fast and too-sharp. He swiped the metrocard off the desk, nearly crinkled it between his fingers he was so afraid of dropping it. “I do believe I have a nerd-boy to fuck. Maybe forty. We’ll see if I get bored, or how quickly.”

Rolling his eyes, Penny led Eliot out the door.

* * *

The lines were stupid, but Eliot cheated his way to the front by being charming and clever and cleverly obtuse when it warranted. In almost no time at all he was on a bus in Elysium, leaning against a sun-warmed window and gazing at cornfields going past, too fast to be more than a blur of summer-green. He wasn’t quite certain how he’d gotten there or where he was going, but he knew he was on the way to where he wanted to be.

After an hour or two -- or maybe just a minute or three -- the bus pulled to a stop outside a big estate with grand lawns and exquisite topiary. “This can’t be right,” Eliot said. “Quentin’s far too uncouth to live _here_.”

And he was correct -- Quentin _didn’t_ live there, but he spent a lot of his time there. “He’s very good with the children,” said a woman who’d answered the door when Eliot had knocked. She was tall and fair and matronly, with a child on one hip. “Spends a lot of time here, and with Persephone gone we can use all the help we can get. He’s been a boon.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Eliot drawled. 

He was led to a room on the second floor. A series of big windows let in copious amounts of light, and Quentin was drenched in it, stupidly beautiful as he ran around the room like a fool, pretending to be one of the many airplanes he’d magicked into soaring after a small scattering of shrieking, delighted children.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” asked the woman.

“No,” said Eliot, too distracted even to thank her. He leaned his shoulder against the frame of the open door and tipped his head against it, too, a smile quirking his lips. This was nice, he thought. Quentin had been such a dorky dad, it was always hysterical to watch him in action.

Eliot’s chest hadn’t felt this warm and full in a long, long time.

* * *

It took about five minutes -- Q really was oblivious, sometimes -- but eventually one of the children tugged on Quentin’s shirt and pointed at the doorway. “Who’s that?”

Eliot straightened, smile fading slightly as nerves hit him. But that was fine. He could be nervous. Hell, he could be scared, too, if he wanted, but -- what was the worst that could happen? He was _dead_. They both were. Eliot finally had his chance to be braver than he’d been in life.

“Hey there,” Eliot said.

Quentin’s eyes went wide. He took a dramatic step back, blinking hard. “You -- what -- wait, _what_. El --”

Eliot burst out laughing. “Oh, _oh_ ,” he murmured, stepping into the room. Around them, all the planes had halted, trembling in the air, their plastic wings shimmering in the light like birds about to take flight. “It’s good to know death can’t change the awkward heart of you. Want to try that again, Coldwater? In coherent sentences this time, if you please.”

Taking a big breath, Quentin blurted out, “What are _doing_ here?!”

“Oh, that,” Eliot said, flapping a hand elegantly in the air. “I’m dead. Surprise!”

He liked the way Q was watching him. There was hunger there, an intensity that he hadn’t expected, not even after all that time in his happy place, imagining it. Quentin watched him like there was no one else in existence save the two of them, as if there was no one else in all the many worlds that Quentin cared to look at quite so much as he wanted to look at _Eliot_. 

Despite himself, Eliot shivered.

“It’s too early,” murmured Q. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Eliot murmured back, coming ever closer. “Think you’re the only one allowed to die too young? Maybe we’re just balancing out the scales. After all, I already died of old age.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“No,” Eliot frowned, coming to a stop close enough that Q had to crane his head up to stare at him. He looked so _surprised_. Eliot hoped it would soften into surprised happiness, soon, but he’d take just about anything he could get, to be honest. It was a little embarrassing how needy he felt now, here, in Q’s presence. He’d gotten so _good_ at living without him.

But he wasn’t alive anymore. He didn’t have to pretend.

“You’re just the asshole who decided to sacrifice himself,” Eliot said, voice very dangerous and very, very quiet. “The righteous, infuriating little _fuck_ who decided to leave me behind.”

“That’s not -- I didn’t _plan_ on it, El! I never meant to --”

“You never mean to do half the things you wind up doing,” Eliot argued, annoyed. “And yet somehow you do them anyway, you impossible, stupid, _beautiful_ idiot. Q, I _missed_ you.”

Quentin gulped, and -- there. There it was. 

That flicker of happiness, warm and fond, deep and kind. 

“I missed you, too,” Quentin said, and Eliot could tell he _meant_ it. “It hurt -- having to leave without ever seeing you. All that time with the monster, seeing your face but never seeing _you_. And -- and I know you don’t -- I _know_ , okay, but I -- I --”

“Tell me you’re sorry,” Eliot told him, unyielding. “Tell me. And then I can tell _you_ that _I’m_ sorry, and then we can get past all this so I can tell you how much I fucking love you and what an idiot I was for not giving us a chance. And _then_ ,” he added, with a spark of heat, “we can find an empty room and I can _show_ you, repeatedly and enthusiastically. So enthusiastically you might need --”

“ _El_ ,” hissed Quentin, as red in the face as he’d been in life, his hands coming up to slap familiarly over Eliot’s mouth to try and muffle the filthy things he’d planned on saying. Eliot laughed again -- he couldn’t remember laughing much in the last years of his life, but he was laughing plenty here, now, with Q being Q, _oh_ \--

Apparently, it was actually possible to feel dizzy with happiness. Who knew?

Scandalized, Quentin kept hissing, “You can’t just -- just say things like that in front of --”

“Mr Q,” said a pint sized, adorable child. “Who is this? Has he come to play with us, too? Do you know him?”

“Er, yes,” agreed Quentin, still flushed with mortification. His hands slipped on Eliot’s mouth when Eliot, entirely without shame, gave them a lingering kiss -- with tongue. The blush intensified and Q’s voice warbled a bit when he said, “He’s -- He’s uh --”

Eliot leaned back to say, bright and cheerful, “I’m his husband! You can call me Mr El.”

Q gaped at him.

Eliot just shrugged, smiling at him. “We practically were,” he pointed out. “I figured it was about time we put a label on it. Maybe a ring? Do they have jewelers here in the Hereafter?”

“Oh, my god,” said Quentin, sounding strangled, and then --

All the planes shot straight down to the ground with a clatter while Quentin grabbed Eliot’s hand and started hauling him out the room, saying back over his shoulder, “Stay here! We’ll uh -- we’ll be back! In uhm, uh -- soon! Just keep playing, okay?”

“Coldwater,” Eliot purred, keeping close at his heels. “Are you taking me to a coat room for a _quickie?”_

Quentin gave him a mutinous look over his shoulder. 

Eliot _laughed_ , beyond delighted.

* * *

“I _am_ sorry,” Quentin whispered.

Eliot bowed his head down, pressed his nose into Q’s hair, and breathed in and out evenly. “Me too,” he whispered back. “Forgive me?”

“ _Yes_. Now would you -- would you just --”

“Mm?” asked Eliot, fingers tracing up and down the length of Quentin’s erection slowly, _so_ slowly. “Something you need, baby? Something you _want_ , maybe? Do tell.”

Q glared up at him, shaking a little with desire where he was pressed back against the wall. The coat room wasn’t a room so much as a _closet_ , and it was a little claustrophobic and smelled strongly of cedar. But a quick spell had lit it warm and golden, more than enough for Eliot to watch the way the splotchy red flush spread down Q’s naked chest.

It might have been a record for them, the speed in which both of them stripped, desperate for skin on skin.

“I have a h-home here,” Quentin rambled, rocking his head back against the wall, fingers gripping tight at Eliot’s hips even as he tried to pretend like he wasn’t coming undone beneath Eliot’s light, cruelly teasing touch. “Sort of. It’s weird, being dead. Like being alive only -- not. It -- you’ll get uh, get -- used to it. But uhm -- _uhm_ \--”

“Is there a point to this?” Eliot murmured, free hand slipping down Quentin’s side to stroke over his ass. In response, Q went up a little onto his toes, a plaintive noise squeaking free of his throat. “Or are you just trying to distract yourself by rambling? Because you know it never works. You always beg by the end, darling.”

“I -- I --”

“Yes, _you_ ,” Eliot sighed, almost delirious with joy, with longing finally fulfilled. Quentin in his arms, his voice stuttering painfully in his ears, his at last. Thank _fuck_. “You panting, you _squirming_. You like it when I tease you like this, you always have. You love it. You --”

“-- love _you_ ,” Quentin gasped out, eyes clenched shut. “Idiot, fucking -- El, I’m trying to say move _in_ with me. Stay with me. Let me -- oh, let me love you, properly for once, please, _please_ \--”

Mouth dry, Eliot said, mostly on auto-pilot: “I told you you’d beg for it.”

Then he caught up with all of what Quentin had said and his hand tightened of its own accord. Quentin made a wild sound, but Eliot had let go of his ass to tilt his chin up so that he could lean down and kiss him, this fucking idiot who was too beautiful and too good and who Eliot -- who he --

“Fuck,” he grit out, pulling back. “Q. _Quentin_ , I -- I love you, too.”

The smile Quentin gave him at that was -- 

Eliot made his own wild sound and leaned down again, biting at one plump lower lip before determinedly fucking Quentin’s mouth with his tongue, desperate to get as much of him as he possibly could. When he finally pulled back, sweetly stubborn Q asked on a trembling moan, “Then will you --”

“ _Yes_.”

“Oh, that’s -- that’s good -- oh!”

Eliot buried his laughter in the crook of Quentin’s shoulder, ducking down close and intimate, pressing in and in until he could get his hand around _both_ their erections. The laughter turned to a hiss of pained pleasure, and then Quentin started _babbling_ , and -- _fuck_ \-- that always got Eliot so _hot_ , but usually it also took a bit more work to get Q this far, to get him trembling and twitching and begging, like there wasn’t anything in the world as good as Eliot’s cock flush against his own, Eliot’s hand slowly working them to the edge and _over_ \--

But it had been a while, hadn’t it? A long time to go from fifty years of almost-romance, of something not unlike domestic bliss, to -- to nothing. To turning their backs on what they wanted, on hushing their hearts, trying to quiet the sound of them breaking.

What _idiots_ they’d been.

Eliot should have stood his ground rather than run. Quentin should have fought, rather than yield. But it was fine. It was _fine_ , now, because -- they had had a lifetime together, once. Then, there’d been nothing, and _then_ Quentin had had the gall to go and _die_. But now -- 

Now, it seemed like they might get to have eternity.

Eliot didn’t plan on wasting a second of it.

“Come for me,” he mumbled, kissing at Quentin’s neck, feeling drunk and _happy_ , and so fucking turned on he was burning with it, felt it like lightning in his veins. He was so fucking full of love, too, love that didn’t scare him, not anymore. “Love,” he said, just to prove it, purely to relish the sound of it rolling true off his tongue. “Quentin, _love_ , I want to feel you come for me, come on, do it --”

“F-fuck,” Quentin whimpered. “You -- that -- say it again and I -- I --”

“ _Love_ ,” Eliot said, scraping his teeth against Quentin’s jaw. “My love, my darling -- I’m going to take you home and spread you open and show you just how _much_ I love you, every part of you, you’ll --”

With a choked gasp, Quentin came. Hot, warm pulses that Eliot caught in his hand with a groan belly-deep, cock twitching hard at the feel, the knowledge, of Quentin going tense then slack in Eliot’s firm grip. 

Quentin wriggled his own hand in between them to join Eliot’s, his fingers against Eliot’s dick so hot and perfect and fuck, _fuck_ , yes -- yes, please -- it wouldn’t take long, not now, not like this, Q rubbing his palm against the head of Eliot’s dick _just_ right, and --

Breathless, Quentin tipped his head to the side to give Eliot a lazy, sated smile. He said, “I love you, too,” and that was it, that was all Eliot could take.

Groaning, Eliot came undone.

* * *

After, dressed and sticky, Quentin pretended to be deeply irritated -- he was only a _little_ irritated, Eliot knew -- as he sighed, reaching for the knob of the door. He said, “I can’t believe we just had sex in here. That is not the behavior of a responsible adult! They’re going to ask me to leave and never come back and --”

Eliot wasn’t quite ready to let him go yet.

He hooked an arm around Q’s stomach and dragged him back. Q went easy, fingers slipping free from the knob. He leaned his head back against Eliot’s chest, eyes half-lidded, smile a little bashful but knowing, too. _He knows I love him_ , Eliot realized, fierce and glad and so, so thankful. 

Eliot said, “Excuse _you_ , when have I ever claimed to be responsible?”

Laughing, Q leaned up, one arm hooking around the back of Eliot’s neck to draw him down for another lazy, sweetly tender kiss. Eliot couldn’t resist smiling into it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! (:


End file.
